How to Soothe a Baby

One of the most frustrating sounds is that of a crying baby. This is why learning how to soothe a baby is one of the greatest skills you can learn.



Of the four things that babies do – poop, sleep, eat, and cry – crying is the only one that you don’t want to happen on a regular basis.

Fortunately for you, I’m here to share with you the secret to get a baby to stop crying, to soothe a baby.

You need only two things to stop a baby from crying:

• Patience
• Creativity

If you can exercise patience during a seemingly unstoppable crying spell as well as use your creativity more often than not you will soothe that crying baby.

That’s it – you now know the secret!

Wait a minute you say? That isn’t very helpful, how about some techniques too? I don’t have all day to think up ingenious ways to soothe a baby. HELP ME OUT!

Ok, ok, calm down. You don’t have to twist my arm, I haven’t let you down yet, and I’m not going to start now.

I’m going to skip the no-brainers and assume that you’ve checked the basics. The baby isn’t hungry, wet, or hurt. This is simply a baby who is crying for no particular reason, or at least one that you can’t decipher.

The Game is on

You just finished feeding the baby and are going to put him down in his crib for a nap so you can watch the game that’s about to start. There are 3 minutes before kickoff and as you lay the baby down, he starts screaming his head off.

What are you going to do? Your wife told you that yesterday the baby screamed for 45 minutes straight before she finally got him calmed down – that means you’re going to miss the whole first quarter, or at least not be able to enjoy it much.

You quickly pick the baby up – he calms down a little and after a couple of minutes you lay him back down. Commence the screaming. Ugh – this is terrible, how am I ever going to get this baby to stop crying. I just fed him and changed him, what is his problem.

By this point the crying has started to get to you and you are losing patience. You can hear the TV from the other room and know something big just happened and now you’ve missed it.

Can you feel the stress level going up? You just want this baby to stop crying so he can nap and you can grab a cold one and enjoy the game. Is this too much to ask?

No it’s not. There is no reason why you can’t have your cake and eat it too. So let’s solve this problem.

Steps to soothe a baby

Take a deep breath and remind yourself that you need to have some patience with your young one. His only form of communication with you is to cry.

Step two is to reassure yourself that you can handle this. Let’s face it, you solve problems every day. You deal with adults who have half the mental capacity of your child, if you can do that, you can soothe a baby.

Ok, back to our scenario. You pick the baby up look around the room. Ah – the swing, he loves the swing – let’s try that. Baby in, swing on – still crying.

So we try the bouncy seat – baby in, seat on – still crying.

Obviously if one of these baby devices work your problem is solved so you will stop trying, but chances are they won’t work, at least not all the time.

Now it’s time to pull out the big guns.

This is where your creativity needs to kick in. In this case it seems that your baby is calmer while being held, good – but we still want to be able to lay him down to take a nap, otherwise you’ll be holding him until he’s 8. Not so good.

You need some fresh ideas.

Fresh Ideas

For the most part, you can soothe a baby more easily in a dark, quiet room. So turn down the volume on the TV and find a place that is relatively dark. If it’s broad daylight outside, find a closet where you can sit or stand comfortably with your baby.

As for whether to sit or stand this is going to depend on how your baby reacts. If he screams more when you sit, then you better stand, and vice versa.

We talked about the various ways to hold a baby – again experiment here to find which one works best in this case. Once you find it, stick with it, moving the baby around a lot is just going to rile him up even more.

While you are holding the baby you may try to softly bounce him. This is easier to do while standing, or if you are sitting and there is a rocking chair nearby you can try that. The gentle and smooth motion will help to soothe a baby.

Also experiment with various sounds. One that I have found that works well is the “shh shh” sound. I read once that the reason we use that sound is because it is similar to the sound the baby hears in the womb. Remember when we talked about simulating the womb with the swaddle, well we can do it with sound too.

If your baby is still crying there is no need to panic. Take another deep breath and remind yourself that patience is a virtue and one that you will not deny your baby.

Soft singing can also help. The nice things about babies is that they don’t understand the words you’re saying. This means that if you don’t know all the lullabies that your wife does you can sing whatever you want. They also don’t care if you can’t carry a tune in a bucket, just as long as you’re soft and smooth.

Personally I have found that there are some Jimmy Buffett songs that work well to soothe a baby. The big thing is to find a song with a soft and smooth melody that will calm your baby. If you don’t know the words you can hum.

Recently I found myself at a family gathering with my brother’s twin boys. My brother and his wife had left to go somewhere and one of the babies would not stop crying. My mother had tried to get him to stop as had my wife.

After listening to this for 15 minutes or so I took the baby and left the room – I had to show them how it was done. We walked down a dark hallway and I bounced him lightly as we walked. I tried the “shh shh” sounds as well as singing a couple of my favorite Jimmy Buffett songs.

Ten minutes later he was calm. I took him back out to the family and gave him back to my mother. A couple minutes later we were back in the dark hallway and within 5 minutes he was calm again and ready to head back out.

This time I laid him in his car seat and he was out. No more crying, no more screaming, just a quiet and sleeping baby.

This was the first time I had ever had to stop my nephew from crying. I didn’t know what he liked or was used to but kept my patience and used my creativity to find something that worked.

The good news for you is that when it is your baby you’ll have that bond already establish. From your scent to the sound of your voice, your baby will recognize that he is safe and with someone who will take care of him. That by itself can help to soothe a baby.

If you work on this and practice it, then when the time comes at 3 in the morning and you have a big presentation at work in 5 hours that you’ll have the patience and creativity to get your little one back to sleep so that everyone is happy!

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